Dog 3000
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Re: Bin Laden intervention
Nov 04, 2004, 16:07
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The Bin Laden tape was clearly recent (last few months) and of course it was released for the sole purpose of effecting the election in the US (which it probably succeeded in doing.)
The question is, did Bin Laden seriously believe that this tape was going to scare Americans into voting AGAINST Bush (a silly assumption) or was he trying to pump Bush up to assure his re-election (too clever by half)?
One has to admit, the Bush team couldn't have planned a better October Surprise.
I've never been able to decide if Bin Laden's a genius or a blockhead.
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morfe
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Hillary 2008
Nov 04, 2004, 16:36
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What a fragging nightmare. Running her would just guarantee another dose of pumped up New American Centurions. Hillary is surely loathed as much or more than Clinton by the Real American People.
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cancer boy
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Re: Hillary 2008
Nov 04, 2004, 16:43
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I thought the "Real American People" had a bit of a soft spot for Bill Clinton? If he could have run for a third term I expect they would have had him back...
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Dog 3000
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Re: Hillary 2008
Nov 04, 2004, 16:47
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Bill si, Hillary no.
She has absolutely none of his political skills or charm.
She only got elected to the senate because she was married to a president (and Giuliani had to drop out of the race.) The idea that being first lady qualifies you to be president is a real stretch I think.
I'd like to think the Dem party is going to scrap everything and come up with an entirely new strategy and a bunch of new faces to run for office next time. To think there were 9 dems running for the nomination, and Kerry really WAS the best one! (Yikes!)
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Popel Vooje
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Re: Bin Laden intervention
Nov 04, 2004, 17:00
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<One has to admit, the Bush team couldn't have planned a better surprise>.
That's what made the whole thing seem fishy to me, tbh ... still, this is all just speculation.
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gorseddphungus
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it is all in the bible
Nov 04, 2004, 17:18
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No, kerry for some people was the Antichrist (no kidding)! How can anyone publicly support gay marriage in a fundamentalist society and go against the christian coran?
I reckon he obviously under(over)estimated the people he was addressing. If I had been a candidate for the presidency, I would never have been so dumb to mention those things. He put his foot in it in the moral battle cos most bush supporters did not vote for irak. Moral issues were, according to polls, what decided the election, not the lives of 100-200,000 civilians in Irak.
Quickly approaching Saddam Hussein's record innit.
Sadly, Dubya is the right man for the right time and the right place, not Kerry. America is heading the same way as Bin Laden.
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Dog 3000
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Re: Four more years?
Nov 04, 2004, 17:34
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I live in an overwhelmingly liberal town and it's somewhat the same: the democrats are in mourning (all the usual "I'm moving to Canada" malarky). However the republicans are also subdued -- I think in my locale it's because the dem majority have been such poo-flinging howler monkeys that they are simply tired of getting poo flung at them and don't want to advertise their loyalties (I think the huge discrepency between exit polls and actual vote tallies confirms this -- republicans were more likely to refuse to tell pollsters who they voted for.)
Not sure what's going on in your neck of the woods though.
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Merrick
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Re: Kerry's fault? - pt2
Nov 04, 2004, 17:44
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"a significant number of Bush supporters must have bought into his "Axis of Evil" bullshit."
The good/evil thing was crucial. Karl Rove (Bush's chief nazi and pupeteer) said last time there were around three and a half million radical christians who didn't vote, and who he beleived would vote Bush if only they could be motivated to vote at all. Three and a half million is exactly the size of Bush's majority in the popular vote this time.
Just as Britain is a country only a couple of centuries on from the Enclosures and so has a residual strong class system and get-off-my-land attitude; just as Australia is a couple of centuries on from pioneers with dodgy backgrounds having to force their living from the land and so has a stong streak of unpretentiousness, get-out-and-explore and racism; so the USA is only a couple of centuries on from paranoid persecutied christian puritans deciding they weren't gonna let people who didn't thnk like them run the show any more.
When you have faith and fear, you don't need facts. Even if the facts contradict your faith and fear, you just ignore them.
The report of the US government's 9/11 Commission said there was no evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Not only do most Bush supporters believe there was actually such a link, but - here's the important bit - most believe the evidence has been found.
Most Bush supporters believe the report into Iraqi WMD which said there were none actually said the opposite.
Most Bush voters believe the world favours his re-election despite the opposite being emphatically true.
In all these cases, a majority of Kerry voters disagreed with the Bush voters, ie had a grasp of facts rather than faith.
But as Kerry didn't paint himself as Good fighting Evil, those faith voters - and there are a terifying quantity of them - were never going to listen, no matter what Kerry actually said.
so yes, a large part of the American electorate is indeed stupid in a way that electorates in other powerful nations are not.
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cancer boy
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Re: Hillary 2008
Nov 04, 2004, 17:44
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I quite liked Edwards, but maybe just because he reminds me of Bill Hicks.
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cancer boy
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Re: Kerry's fault? - pt2
Nov 04, 2004, 17:53
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> Even if the facts contradict your faith and fear, you just ignore them.
e.g. the religious right's reimagining of the constitution to remove that pesky separation of church and state. All this is making me feel slightly better about the fact that I was supposed to be emigrating there a couple of years ago and it all fell through - otherwise I'd be enjoying a severe case of taxation without representation at the moment.
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